


A Melancholy, Nostalgic Tune

by mooshkabunny



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Family Member Death, Passed tense family death not occuring in the fic, Post-Dragon Age: Inquisition - Trespasser DLC, family fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-01-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:55:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22237456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mooshkabunny/pseuds/mooshkabunny
Summary: After all their fighting is done, the Inquisitor and Thom Rainier make a small detour to Markham. Based on tinibellbeanie (on tumblr)‘s awesome and extensive Free Marcher headcanons and knowledge, and then me riffing on what Thedosian Logger communities must be like. Apologies to real logger communities, I probably could have done more research.(Bringing this and my other Adaar/Blackwall fics from tumblr!)
Relationships: Blackwall/Female Inquisitor, Female Adaar/Blackwall, Female Adaar/Blackwall | Thom Rainier
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	A Melancholy, Nostalgic Tune

Though they’d met many times during war, always rushed, always quietly grateful and hesitant, it wasn’t until after Solas’s plan was stopped that Thom Rainier truly got to meet his new family.

The Adaars had been at first hesitant about their new human addition, but after the war and with peacetime ahead, they readily accepted him, and the new addition he and Sula brought along. Little Jenny had stayed with the Adaars in Kirkwall while her mother and father fought, and when they returned, safe and sound, it was a homecoming Thom had never prepared himself for.

The day had begun with far too many hugs before he and Sula got to see their daughter, but it was all laughter, and strangely enough, tears. Sula’s mother held his face in her hands and kissed him on both cheeks, having to bend down to do so. Sula’s brothers clasped him tightly, their voices booming out their approval and desperate to hear war stories and descriptions of the magic he and Sula had seen. Sula’s baby sister jumped up and down in their faces, demanding to tell them her own stories of what she’d seen in Kirkwall while they’d been gone. Sula’s Grandmother and Aunt both rounded on him, asking him if he needed healing, food, tea, a seat, and he couldn’t catch up to answer. Finally, it was Sula’s father who smiled tearily at him, and handed Little Jenny over, almost reluctantly. They all loved her as unconditionally as he and Sula did.

It was a strange sensation, and obviously they poured Sula with more love and devotion than they did to him, but somehow he belonged to these people now, these Tal-Vasoth. He did not know them well, and he was shy of their company, worried that he did not deserve such kindness, but much like with Sula, their smiles and their warmth chased away any doubt in his mind. He simply felt at home.

Later that night, as the celebration died down, he sat with Sula’s mother who held Jenny tight, bouncing her gently in her arms, as the others told stories, and introduced Sula to all the new residents of their newly made Tal-Vasoth Home. They both needed a little quiet after the exuberance of the day, and had found a place by the fire secluded and away.

“I imagine you’ll see your family before you go back to the Storm Coast then?” Sula’s mother asked. He had to remind himself to call her Asala, though that seemed strange. The question she asked was even stranger.

He hadn’t thought of his own family in years. Markham seemed not only a great distance away, but several lifetimes. He’d left it knowing he’d never go back. The thought that it was even an option so many years later was shocking. More shocking, was that it seemed… Less and less like an oddity left behind and more like an ache. He hadn’t felt homesick ever, not even in his lowliest states. Why now?

“I… Doubt it,” he said, after a moment. “I haven’t spoken to my family in a long time. I’m not even sure they’re still there.”

Asala looked sad, but not pitying. “I suppose that makes sense. There’s too many separated families in the world though… And reunions are so happy.”

He didn’t mean to, but he laughed a bit cruelly. “Not always. Not all families are as kind and friendly as this one. This is a good reunion.”

“Is your family one of those?”

Another question that left him aching rather than the familiar resentment he had been used to. When he was young, all his family was to him were a mother and father too stuck in the past to look ahead. They were backward, complacent, too stuck in tradition and their woods. They grieved every day for his sister… At the time, he felt that as lack of love, but looking back, that wasn’t quite right. He grieved too, but in a more destructive way. And they were simply common people, trying to survive and live in the way they knew how. He’d stopped thinking of them for so long, it took until this moment, until he had a child of his own, until he saw a family full of support and acceptance, to even realize that perhaps he’d always misjudged his mother and father.

“No,” he finally said, though he wasn’t sure. “But… I doubt they’d want to know me anymore.”

They spent a week in Kirkwall, resting before they made their trek back home. Varric insisted that they would take the finest of Kirkwall’s ships back to the Storm Coast, but Thom told him that they would be travelling by land. It was a curious decision, but Varric supplied them with what he could.

It was an awkward situation asking Sula if he could take their family completely out of the way by going all the way to Markham, but like always, she smiled at him, took his hand, and told him “Of course.”

There were several times throughout the journey that Thom almost backed out. He’d hoped it would be a more perilous journey so that it would be unfeasible, but too much good will still existed towards the Inquisitor and Herald of Andraste, and the people of the Free Marches seemed to go out of their way to help them on the road. He’d hope that travelling with a small baby would eventually make them realize how foolish he’d been to want to go in the first place, but Jenny was a miraculous baby in more ways than one—she hardly ever fussed, and seemed to like the varieties of travel they encountered. She even took her first steps, somewhere around Ostwick, and he couldn’t cope. There had to be some sign that would push them back on the road to the Storm Coast rather than higher and higher into the mountains, into the trees, and closer to long forgotten territory, but no sign would come.

He knew they were close to Markham when he heard the familiar whistle that hit him with a tidal wave of nostalgia.

“What is that?” Sula asked, looking towards the tops of the trees all around them, while Jenny giggled happily.

“Markham is… A lumber town,” he said with a groan. “While they’re up in the trees or about to cut one down, they whistle a message. Each melody means something different.” And each tune came back to him with frightful ease. The ones floating in the tree canopies above were slightly varied from what he remembered (or perhaps he had forgotten more of the intricate patterns) but he recognized the general message. “They marked whatever tree they’re in for measurement. It’s 18 feet tall, I missed the weight, but there’s a part of it that’s no good. They’ll have to mark it off for rot, but the rest is still decent.”

She looked at him, impressed. “You’re always a surprise, Thom Rainier.”

He tried to laugh, to smile, but his unease made it come out as more of a breathy sigh than anything. Another whistle sounded off, and his unease only increased. “Don’t get too pleased. They spotted us.”

A flash of concern crossed her features before she shook her head. “They don’t… Expect any trouble, right?”

“Well,” he sighed again. He seemed to be holding his breath slightly, and had to keep reminding himself to breathe. “They aren’t… The most welcoming of people in the Marches… But they aren’t violent.”

The worst of it was that they hadn’t used the whistle for stranger. They knew exactly who he was. He thought he’d never hear that low, somber tune that meant Rainier. It was an old family joke. Their whistle always sounded like a storm. It felt like it too, hearing it after all this time, high above them like a warning.

“They might be to me though,” he added quietly, as they pressed on. Jenny’s happy gurgles seemed completely out of place as all of a sudden the woods around them completely quieted of whistling.

It seemed the whole city was waiting for them once they reached Markham’s borders. At least all of its loggers, harnesses barely undone and axes still in hand, stood there eyeing them quietly. Thom barely recognized most of them, but like they must have seen from the trees, he knew who among them were his cousins and distant relatives. The heavy weight of dread he carried with him from Kirkwall seemed to finally have settled right at the bottom of his throat, pounding and making it hard to focus.

Sula had settled for holding Jenny close and in front, clearly thinking that a child present would prevent any real violence from breaking out, if it did. And when all Markhamers present proved too stubborn to speak first, she obliged them all by filling the silence with pleasantries. “Hello. We were hoping to travel into Markham. Is there a problem?”

The loggers looked towards Sula with surprise, as if they hadn’t really seen her, or noticed that she was one, a Tal-Vasoth, two, holding a baby, and three, even there. Once the surprise wore off though, one of the Rainier cousins, Thom couldn’t guess who having never really been close to any of them, spoke.

“If he’s who we think he is, he’s not welcome. And who are you supposed to be? What’s an oxwoman got to do up here?”

Sula had started to say something, but the moment ox-woman was uttered, Thom stomped forward. He could hear her deflate irritably behind him, but he would not stand for her to be insulted by this mountain trash.

“That there is the Herald of Andraste and Inquisitor herself. She has saved all of Thedas more times than you’ve shit in a day, with that stick up your ass, and you owe her respect! So apologize now, or deal with me,” he hissed, and the loggers muttered among themselves. But his cousin, probably the oldest if he remembered, Erik, simply stared him down.

“Fine then. The Herald of Andraste gets our respect and will be treated with all that Markham has to offer. You are traitorous scum, and are lucky we haven’t killed you where you stand, Thomas,” the last word was spat out, and all Thom could do was smirk. His blood was boiling, and his heart pounding, and if there was ever a recipe for Thom Rainier to make a stupid decision, it was all but completed by calling him by his father’s name.

He punched his cousin square in the jaw. The other loggers fell back into a circle, making way for the scuffle, as if it was years and years ago, and this was but a small dispute outside the tavern. Only Sula shouted, but he couldn’t hear as Erik landed his elbow into his gut. Thom was able to land a kick in retaliation, sending Erik off him. Erik quickly shuffled back up, charging, and Thom simply sidestepped, years of combat training giving him the advantage. Erik stumbled into the circle, and the other men helped him up, pushing him back into the fray.

“I could do this all day, Erik. I saw you piss your pants when you were a boy, you really think you can hit—,” and Erik did hit him, and hard. What Erik lacked in any sort of combat training, he made up for in bulk. He was a taller man than Thom, a memory flying by that Erik’s father was a rather large brute, and years of climbing and cutting trees down did wonders for a man’s upper body strength. He was heavier too, and when he tackled Thom to the ground, the wind was completely knocked from him, and Thom could only lay there as Erik landed blow after blow.

But a moment of hesitation gave Thom the in to quickly grab Erik’s fat head and land a quick head butt. Erik fell back, and Thom was able to get back up, only to fall back down. Brains rattled from Erik’s punches, and now the headbutt, left him delirious, and he retched.

Boos echoed from the men around them, trying to edge them back into the fight, but both Erik and Thom were getting on in years. While they laid on the ground, recovering, Sula stomped into the circle, kicking Thom first, and then Erik, before rounding on the booing loggers.

“Honestly! Is this how you solve your problems here in Markham? You’re a bunch of boys! Take me to someone in charge, and then we’ll deal with your petty feuds, but for now this idiocy has to stop! My baby is hungry and I will not feed her while her father is beat silly, understood?”

That shut them up all right away. Though the world was spinning in front of his eyes, Thom had to laugh. At least that would always be consistent about Markham: a tough lady with a baby is always the last word in a fight. The loggers picked up Erik, dusting him off, and left Thom to the ground, so Sula had to reach down and help him up, but they led them into the city.

Another logger, not a relation of Thom’s, spoke to Sula as they led them, “There’s a lord, but there’s not much point in taking you to him. This is a loggers’ dilemma, so we deal with it in our own way. We’ll take you to the guild, if that’s alright… Herald, ma’am.” 

“That sounds perfectly fine, thank you,” Sula said coldly. Thom didn’t want to lean on her while she held the baby, but she held him too close and his head still spun for him to not. If he had any shame, he’d be embarrassed, but mostly he was pleased with Sula’s authority. Her bossing around these mountain trash bastards was a pleasant thought that eased the steady ache stretching across his face.

As he recovered, he noticed more and more of the city around them. It wasn’t a large city, and it hadn’t grown much. Most of the shops, houses, and streets, all seems like they did 20 odd years ago. He remembered being a boy and hopping onto the walls, walking their distance, skipping rocks across the small lake by the Lord’s castle (it was a moat now. Apparently relations between the loggers’ guild and the Lord were only worsening), and kissing girls in the alcove at the end of the Market Square. Memories flew by as they walked further and further into the loggers’ end of the city, where the homes were smaller, wooden, and edged the forest while the rest of town was fenced in. In the center of all the homes was a grand hall, made of the finest redwood, and he laughed. He remembered being a boy and seeing his father and uncles leave the Hall after a long day’s work, thinking them giants. It was much smaller now.

“Are you going to punch more people, Thom?” Sula whispered to him, shifting Jenny to her side. Jenny had started to whine fussily. So it hadn’t been a lie, Jenny was hungry, he thought, laughing. She had an instinct for getting people on her side that seemingly happened by accident, and he knew that Sula must have been bluffing before, and worrying now that it was true. “Should I have brought a sword?”

“Depends,” he said, half a joke, and half honest. He let go of her, and stood on his own as they came to the steps outside the guild. “If my father is around I might not have a choice.”

She glanced at him from the side of her eyes, and then stared back up at the guild door fearfully. He hadn’t thought that she’d be nervous too. He touched her shoulder gently. “I won’t,” he promised, and the door to the guild opened.

They were led inside what essentially looked like the audience chamber back at Skyhold, but far less decorative. There was instead of a throne, a podium at the end of the room, carved with fine decorations of forest scenes and mountain landscapes. He sighed again, familiar feelings of boredom entering his heart, almost replacing his nerves. He remembered being scolded here multiple times, and always tuning it out, thinking how boring forest scenes were. The loggers all gathered around and waited for their representative. It had been a great moment of pride for their family when his father was chosen to be representative of the guild, the man who would go and speak to the Lord of Markham on their behalf, make sure that working conditions were safe and proper for the men and women of the city. He vaguely remembered a time when his father might have hoped for him to follow suit, though that was a hope quickly dashed by teenage Thom’s behavior. A horrible thought struck him that maybe Jenny would one day rebel against him, but he looked to Sula as she nervously glanced about the room, trying to still look authoritative as she tried to both hold their child and unbutton her shirt to feed. The thought quickly left as he took Jenny from her.

“You might have a concussion,” Sula said, though she looked grateful to have her hand free.

He wanted to answer to assure her, but the easy grin he tried to give her made him dizzy again, so he simply held onto Jenny tightly and waited for the Representative.

It wouldn’t have shocked him to see a small, elderly woman stand up there. What did shock him was that it was his mother. His shoulders stiffened, his back went straight, and he quickly used a free hand to push back his hair.

She looked strong for her years. She had to be at least 80. She looked tired and sad too. Her back was straighter than an old woman’s should be, and her eyes still a steely blue, clear as day, but she looked at him with such sadness. He thought that facing his crime in front of the world had been earth shattering enough. Seeing his mother look at him, ashamed, was far worse.

There was a long silence, and it felt as though time itself was frozen, until his mother spoke. He couldn’t tell if it sounded the same, or completely different, but it was his mother’s voice, and he felt a teenager again, being scolded, tutted at, sighed at, and finally being said goodbye to as he left for good. Her voice was all of those memories and more, gravelly, somehow hushed and booming, filling the whole room.

“So you’ve come home. And you bring the Inquisitor, and her babe?”

“Our baby,” Sula said, her eyes steady and her shirt open. “Who is hungry. Do you mind?”

His mother sized Sula up, which if he’d been any other man, at any other time, with any other family, he might have laughed at. As tall and proud as his mother stood, she was still a fairly small human woman, and though the podium was higher up than the rest of the room, they were barely at eye level with one another, thanks mostly to the podium.

“I won’t begrudge a mother her duty,” his mother said, still staring at Sula. She did not look pleased at all, and did not seem to know what to make of the situation. As placid as she tried to seem, it was evident that she was tense, her voice was cold, and her eyes pained.

“Thank you,” Sula said, smiling, and she reached for Jenny. It took him a moment to realize what was happening, but he handed their daughter over and felt instantly vulnerable.

“Is she another bastard of yours? You hear rumors of many,” his mother said, and it was a cold stab in his heart, not from shaming his mother, but Sula. His frozen terror immediately left, and he glared right back at his mother.

“I’ve never met any, and I’ve always been careful. Sula is my wife,” he said, and he fancied that his voice must match his mother’s in terms of cool rage. “Gwyneth, my honest born daughter.”

That struck her. Her features wrinkled in distaste, and he felt right in having never come home. He wished the urge hadn’t occurred to him at all.

“If that offends you so, then we’ll leave. It’s my fault we decided to come here at all, and I had no wish to trouble you so. If you let us leave now, we might even make it to a town, although the woods offers more hospitality than this…” he thought he was being very reasonable, but Sula glared at him, jostling Jenny from her comfortable position at her breast, making the baby cry. She quickly replaced her, but the glare stayed.

“I… Have no quarrel with the Inquisitor or her baby… They may stay the night,” his mother was struggling, and he could tell behind the podium that she was fiddling with her fingers the way he did when he was nervous. He had forgotten how much they shared.

“If I may request,” Sula started. “He is my family. As he is yours. If I could speak for him…”

“That might sit well in the Lord’s house, and under his laws, but this is the Loggers’ guild. Men speak for themselves here,” his mother said, and he smiled. He did appreciate that part of the mountain life. “And we won’t hear him.”

“Does the Markham Loggers’ Guild leave no room for redemption? Do they not appreciate hard work and dedication?” his pride for Sula was close to bursting, but he placed a hand on her shoulder, and she stopped. With a smile, he shook his head.

“They don’t need to know any of that. They don’t want to. I just wanted to make amends, but its too late for that. I’ve learned in the passed few years as much as I try, there’s some things I can’t fix,” he turned to his mother, surprised how the nerves had returned. “I met Sula’s family. They were good people, and happy to know their grandchild. I remembered that you were good people, and I thought I owed you the courtesy. You’ve met Gwyneth now, and we’ll be going.”

With that, he and Sula turned to leave, and he couldn’t help but see that she was dissatisfied with that ending, but he was sure it was all they would get. Until Erik spoke instead of his mother.

“We’ve heard all the rumors about you becoming a better man. First you were trash, a mercenary at best and a child murderer at worst. We heard that you lied, and then came forward with the truth, and helped this Inquisitor save the world. A man can be much, but he isn’t much of a man if he can’t even come home for his father’s funeral.”

In the back of his mind, he knew. He knew that his mother wouldn’t have agreed to lead the Guild if his father was still alive. He knew that his father, as old as he probably was now, would have been out in the trees with the other loggers if he was still alive, still whistling that low sad somber tune. His father would have been the first to punch him, if he had been alive. But he didn’t want to think it.

“Thom,” Sula whispered, and he realized he was shaking.

“We assumed it meant you’d given up on us completely, Thomas,” his mother said, and her voice was heavy with grief. It was that touch that reminded him truly of his mother. That final touch that truly made the reality of being back in Markham real. Grief. “So we gave up on you.”

“I didn’t know,” he said to Sula.

“How could you have?” she said back, and he wracked his brain for any memory of word, but while he had been in Orlais, while he had been on the run, there were so many letters he tossed and burned, and who would have found him when he lied and pretended to be another man? There were many ways he could have known. He was just running from them all.

And his father had been a good man. A man burdened by grief, by weariness, by tradition, by a life that would just go in simple circles, but he was good. He taught him honor, honesty, fairness. Simple things, like fishing, carving, how to use an ax to fight a bully but never hurt him. Thom had abandoned so much of that for so long because he thought glory would make his life worthwhile.

He turned back, to address just his mother, because she was the only one who needed to see, to hear, the sincerity in his grief. “I didn’t know. I wasn’t the man father would have wanted me to be for so long, and I was running away. From myself, from life. Probably from this too. So I didn’t know. But if I had, I would have come home. And I know that there’s no forgiveness for my not having come home. If you’d tell me where you put the ashes, I’d pay my respects, and we’ll be off… I swear. And you’ll never have to see the likes of me again, I swear. But know please that I… I was a fool. But I never wanted… And you deserved a better son, a better child. Forgive me.”

For a few moments, he wasn’t sure what to do next. But Sula leaned her head in to touch his, and together they walked out.

Before they had gotten to the last step, Erik and Thom’s mother had reached them.

“You can stay the night with me. Tomorrow, we’ll go to the tree where you’re father’s ashes are,” his mother said. Her eyes were wet with tears when she reached for him. They held each other for a long, strange time.

There was much to talk about that night.

Sula and Jenny had gone to bed in the room that had once been his. He and his mother sat up that night, sitting by the fireplace his father had built, in the house his father’s father had built, and talked about it all. Where their lives had gone in the past 20 years. What his father’s last days were like. What his time with the Inquisition was like. There was too much to cover in the time they had, but they tried their best.

“What… Is her kind called? I only know… I don’t think its actually a nice word,” his mother said, sipping on tea gently. He’d never known her for much of a tea drinker, but she had told him that the healer in town told her she’d need to drink it if she wanted to reach her goal of living to one hundred. He had laughed.

“Tal-Vasoth. Or Vasoth. It’s a bit complicated. Vasoth is if you’re born outside the Qun. That’s her,” he said, and she laughed at him.

“Look at you. You know all the words. You must love her a great deal,” she seemed pleased. She had seen his tumultuous youth, and his great love of girls blossom. She must have figured he’d always be a scoundrel.

“I do. And Jenny. They’re my family.”

“I’m glad you’ve found that, Thomas,” she couldn’t get used to just calling him Thom, and he didn’t expect that from her. He remembered that it always used to irritate her more than it ever did his father. “After all that you were… You’ve become a good man. Your father would be proud.”

It felt hollow, like just the thing you were supposed to say, but even so, he smiled. “Thank you.”

“I’m glad you’ve come home. And that you brought little Jenny… She looks an awful lot like your sister.”

He didn’t remember his sister at all. She was a vague shape in his memories. He remembered her laughter, he supposed, and flowers. He hoped that perhaps a piece of her was in Jenny, secretly, perhaps stupidly. But he liked that idea.

“She does,” he said. This was a night of offering. Offering forgiveness, love, solace. It had to be, to make up for so many years.

“Do you think…,” his mother hummed gently, a worrying whistle on the tip of her tongue, and he almost laughed recognizing it. A very Markham trait. “Do you think she’ll grow horns? And be grey?”

“I think she’ll be perfect however she grows up,” he didn’t want to engage that worry. The moment she was born, Jenny was perfect, and she always would be, whatever she grew up to be. Rather than be molded, he would let her grow free, free to choose everything she could ever want to be, ever want to do, anything. She would never be a disappointment because every choice she made, he was certain he would understand. And she wouldn’t disappear like he did. They would be better to each other than he was to his parents and his parents were to him. Nothing lost to grief, only the present to celebrate. That would be her life.

“Well. Your Inquisitor is very pretty, horns and all. Though she’s quite tall. Maybe your Gwyneth will be tall enough to climb trees, come back to Markham, be a logger.”

He laughed. It was an offering, and he knew it was meant with love and affection and hope. “Maybe,” he said, smiling warmly at his mother.

He never thought that would happen again.


End file.
